Category: flora

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a quiet moment

Last week Kayla and I were walking along a dusty, unsealed Depledge Rd in the early morning prior to wandering around in the local patch of bushland in Waitpinga in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia.

A light, but cool, sou’ easterly wind was blowing across the field onto our bodies, the orange-brown Monarch butterflies were notable by their absence, and the yellow tailed cockatoos were watching us and sounding the alarm with their wailing calls. I could hear the laughing kookaburras in the distance.

The sun had just risen above the trees on the eastern horizon and its soft rays highlighted this grass tree (Xanthorrhoea) on the dusty roadside just as we were passing by. We stopped and I looked.

dusty Xanthorrhoea

The sun’s rays were quite weak at that moment since they were shining through the distant trees after rising above the horizon. It doesn’t stay like this for long as the rays find a gap in the trees.

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rain + bushland colours

I have spent many an early morning during the late summer of 2022 wandering through the local bushland with Kayla. There are lots of smells for her (eg., foxes, rabbits, kangaroos) and there are some photographic possibilities for me.

wet bark

It had been raining during the previous day, which was very unusual for summer in the Fleurieu Peninsula. This was in early January during a cool summer. Summer is normally hot and dry with no rain for 5 or so months. The rains normally start in late April.

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them’s the lucky breaks

My days during the first week of October have been spent in front of my old iMac computer struggling to get The Bowden Archives and Industrial Modemity into shape as a book project. The roots of the project are in an unfinished MA (in images and dissertation) at Flinders University in the 1980s. Unfinished because I’d put it and the photography to one side to do a PhD in philosophy.

The title of the proposed book has been recently changed in response to criticism that the original title The Bowden Archives and Other Marginalia was very misleading because it down played the non-Bowden sections.

I have been working on, and reworking, the No Longer, Not Yet text for the Roadtrips photo gallery, as this text has been causing me a lot of grief. I have only managed to produce a rough draft so far. Finally, this draft text does connect with the reset of the book, and at this stage, I am happy to count the small steps as big achievements. Giant steps in fact.

So there has been very little photography done over and above what was snapped whilst on the various poodlewalks:

Dep’s Beach, Waitpinga

Sometimes, on these walks, there were photo possibilities, other times there was nothing. It was pretty much hit and miss. Some days I don’t even bother taking the camera out of the car as I wanted to get the walk over quickly because I felt compelled to get back to the computer to keep working on the text. It’s like returning to being in PhD mode.

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Waitpinga bushland

As part of building up some supplementary images as a background for the forthcoming online walking/photography exhibition at Encounters Gallery I have been photographing in a small patch of bushland in Waitpinga. I needed a contrast to the Littoral Zone images.

bushland, Depledge Rd, Waitpinga

The roadside vegetation that I see whilst walking the back country roads is limited in terms of photographic subject matter. So I have been wandering and exploring this bushland on both the early morning with Kayla and at the late afternoon poodlewalks with Maleko.

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winter starts: walking and thinking

June 1 dawned with cold, blustery south westerly winds, dark clouds, driving rain and big seas. Winter had arrived on cue.

This cloud formation is what greeted Kayla and myself on the early morning poodlewalk on June 1. We hugged the northern edge of Rosetta Head to escape the 50 km south-westerly wind. I was looking across Encounter Bay to Goolwa and to the Coorong.

winter

The weather was too wild to continue to the top of Rosetta Head and down the southern side, so we turned away from the coast, which is where we normally walk and photograph, jumped in the car and drove inland to seek some protection from the gusty, driving wind. We walked up and down Depledge Rd for about 30-40 minutes before I decided to return to exploring the bush “reserve” that ran adjacent to the western side of Depledge Rd in Waitpinga. We had had walked within this “reserve” a few days before.

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returning to the Heysen Trail

In the last week or so I have returned to walking along the Waitpinga section of the Heysen Trail in the morning with Kayla and in the afternoon with Maleko. This section of the Heysen Trail is a narrow strip of scrub or bush that runs between two roads, and it is bounded by two grazing paddocks (cattle and sheep). The narrow strip is a corridor that is quite dense in parts.

The mornings and afternoons have been overcast with minimal wind, and this has allowed me to do some black and white film photography of tree subjects that I had photographed in colour a couple of years ago. I started the scoping here.

Whilst walking to and from the photo sites on both the morning and the afternoon poodlewalks I made some exploratory/scoping studies of different subject matter in the scrub/bush for some future film photography. This is an example:

branch, Heysen Trail

I would have walked past this branch on the edge of the path of the Heysen Trail many times without ever having seen it. I only saw it this time because Kayla went exploring in the undergrowth behind the branch. I quickly made a snap and moved on.

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summer-time + impermanence

The Xmas break  is over for this summer-time.  The holiday crowds have left vacationing  along the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula  during the extended school holidays,  and  returned to work in Adelaide.  The schools are back and  the photographers have gone.

The hot days came and went  during January,   with  the minimium/maximium  temperatures rising.  The warming trend   means that Australian summers are becoming hotter and the heatwaves more intense.  Sadly, the sand has been disappearing  from  Dep’s Beach and Petrel Cove ever since the big storm in December,    and these  two beaches are now looking  desolate.

Over the Xmas break I  continued to  photograph in the early morning  whilst walking with Kayla.  I focused on  low key macro photography before the light became too bright and contrasty. The photography  is hand held and quick. The conditions are not suitable for slow  large format photography.

quartz + salt, Petrel Cove

Currently, the mornings start cool,   the days heat up and reach their zenith around 5 pm but, unlike drought damaged inland regions,  the temperature usually  drops at night. With the crowds gone,  the beaches along the coast are  quiet during the week,  and we often have them to ourselves in the early morning around dawn and sunrise. We now have the space to be in the moment and see the  transient and ephemeral nature of life on the coast.   Continue reading “summer-time + impermanence”

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the Xmas break 2018

The weather along the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula over the Xmas break was surprisingly cool; surprisingly so,  given the record breaking heatwave across central and south-eastern  Australia.

Despite having several  friends  stay with us in and around the  Xmas break, it was  a quiet holiday  for me.  I’d  sprained my right shoulder one morning just before  Xmas day  whilst helping Suzanne  to make the bed.

bark abstract, Encounter Bay

The shoulder  became  inflamed and,  as it involved shoulder bursitis pain,    I was obliged to rest the right arm in a sling  for a couple of days over Xmas  before  seeing a physiotherapist late in the Xmas/New Year Day week.  I was given a set of exercises to do  for a week to strengthen the strained shoulder muscle.

Then the injury  would be reassessed. The prognosis was that it could take 2-8 weeks to heal, depending on  how I responded to the various exercises. I’ve  had good days and bad days so far.   Continue reading “the Xmas break 2018”

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recovered archives

I have been going through my old archives from a PC that died many years ago.  The images had  been backed up on Lacie hard disc which also  crashed,  and they were eventually recovered by a  tech specialist.   The 13,000 images are all jumbled up, there are many repetitions, others are jpegs,  whilst large numbers  are corrupted and so useless.

This is one rescued image from along the coast west of Petrel Cove, and it was made around 2008 when Suzanne and I were coming down to Encounter Bay for the weekends. We  were living in Adelaide’s CBD then, and  we were both working full time.

lichen + granite

My reason for returning to these archives is to see the  images that I have made around the River Murray since 2008.  I wanted to see the relevance  of these archival images for the proposed Our Waters  project with Lars Heldmann.   Continue reading “recovered archives”

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back home

I am  now back home after a hectic period of travelling  during March.  There were  a couple of trips to Wellington to photograph around Wellington quickly followed by one  to attend Photobook/NZ.  After that   I made   a couple of trips  to Swan Hill in Victoria for the  Mallee Routes 2018 exhibition. 

We are  now easing  back  into  our daily routines and poodlewalks at Encounter Bay.  The Easter holidays  are a few days away. That means huge crowds in  the coastal towns and along the coastal walks.

seaweed strand, Petrel Cove

It is autumn in South Australia.   The light has softened,  there is  now  more in the way of morning cloud cover,  the winds have eased,  and the temperatures are  mild  (in the mid 20’s C) . It is still very dry, as there has been no rain.  Continue reading “back home”